Locomotive 127

The 127 series locomotive is a clearing electric direct current locomotive designed for freight transport and shifting on mining tracks. It was produced by the Pilsen company Škoda (as type 27E ) in the years 1984 – 1985 and 1989 . Later, the older 26Em series machines were also incorporated into the 127 series, but only for administrative purposes and different from the 27E type.

Technical description

The locomotive consists of three separate two-axle parts, which are movable relative to each other and connected by tensioning intermediate parts and leveling forks-joints, which eliminate the tilting moment of the individual parts between them. The reason for using this rather unusual type of construction is that the machines often drive on poor quality and uneven surfaces with sharp changes in direction and large slopes. Mining lines are being rebuilt and moved in various ways due to the progressing mining, and this creates such unevenness and unfavorable slope conditions. This also allows for an easier recovery in the event of a derailment of only part of the locomotive. Each part works independently, has its own main controller, fan, starting resistors, direction changer, travel-brake changer. In addition, compressors and main air tanks are located in the outer parts. In addition, the main switch, the driver's cabin with the control controller and the locomotive's control elements are stored in the middle part, which is designed as stable . Foot mounted traction motors are in the chassis of all parts, one for each wheel .

The machines are very heavy (type 26Em - weight up to 180 tons with ballast) axle weight is between 25 and 30 tons per axle in order to achieve the high tractive forces at low speeds that are desirable in mining operations. Although the maximum speed of the locomotives is stated to be 65 km/h, they normally travel at a maximum speed of 30 km/h (at Mosteck) or 40 km/h (at Sokolovsk). The speed is corrected by an electronic limiter; for this reason, all locomotives also have a blocked transition to parallel connection of engines and thus only run on a serial connection .

Origin and production

The locomotives originated as an improved version of the older type 26Em, produced at Škoda in the early 1970s as a derivative of the original 26E for the USSR . The main differences were the use of more modern fechral resistors instead of the older cast iron ones of the previous types, which allowed for improved visibility from the locomotive and simplified maintenance. There was also a slight lightening of the design, reducing the total weight of the locomotive from the original 165 t of the 26Em series to 155 t, with the earliest 27E type locomotives still being delivered at 165 t.

The first locomotives of the first series (designated 27E1 ) arrived at the Severočeské hnědouhelný doly (SHD) in Most (more precisely at the depot in Komořany ) at the end of 1984 and were put into operation alongside the older types. By the spring of the following year, a total of 40 locomotives were delivered here, which gradually dominated most of the important performances and relegated the 26Em series to inferior work. Even though the locomotives were supposed to be delivered to Hnědouhelné doly a briketárny (HDB) in Sokolov , this did not happen in the end and all locomotives of this series received SHD .

Due to the lack of locomotives, the second series ( 27E2 ) was produced four years later , which was already received by both entities - the first 20 units went to Komořany again, but the next delivery of 25 units was already produced for Sokolov. Finally, in the summer of 1989, the last 5 locomotives were still produced, which were also acquired by SHD. This concluded the deliveries.

Use

Related information can also be found in the article Mining railways in Mosteck .

Since the beginning of operation, the locomotives have been deployed on all types of performance on the network of Mostec and Sokolovské coal railways. After the gradual end of deployment of type 26Em locomotives in both operations after 2005 (the very last machine of this type survived in the Sokolovo operation until 2010 ) and the cancellation of the narrow-gauge operation (gauge 900 mm) in Svatava near Sokolov in 2003, these locomotives are the only operated type clearance locomotives in the Czech Republic .

At Mosteck, their main tasks include the transport of mined coal from the ČSA quarry to the Komořany Coal Treatment Plant, the subsequent delivery of trains with treated coal to the Washington marshalling station (near the Třebušice station), from where the coal is already taken away by other carriers, and the transport of ash from the Unipetrol RPA plant in nearby Záluží and from the Počerady Power Plant , transportation of overburden from the Hrabák location to be deposited in the Vršany quarry and others.

In the Sokolovsk region, thanks to the gradual reduction of mining in the Jiří and Družba quarries, they are mainly used to transport overburden to the Smolnická dump and supply coal to the Vřesová power plant . However, the future of operations here is not very favorable, as it is expected that overburden storage and coal mining will end around 2018 due to the extraction of the deposit and the disadvantage of further mining elsewhere.

Of the total number of 90 pieces produced, only a fraction exists today. In connection with the gradual reduction in the volume of mining in both locations, the range of rail traffic also decreases, and approximately half of the locomotives thus became unnecessary. Some locomotives were only in operation for a short time, because after 1989 there was a drastic reduction in operation on the bridge network, for some locomotives (paradoxically, even the latest series 27E2) it was not profitable to invest in a major repair, and so they were canceled and scrapped after only 15 years of operation. As recently as 2002, more than 50 locomotives of this series were in operation at Mostek, currently ( 2016 ) the company Coal Services (a subsidiary of the Czech Coal group, which provides rail transport) owns 25 operating and 6 non-operating locomotives, waiting for scrapping. In normal operation, around 15 locomotives are needed. In 2006, it was decided to modernize the remaining locomotives - most of the local machines received microprocessor control from the HS Trans company and control joysticks were installed instead of the original mechanical controller. The modernized locomotives are at first glance identifiable by the new green paint, but since 2015, locomotives without a control computer have also been painted in this scheme for the purpose of unification. In this design, approximately 10 machines remain in operation.

In Sokolov, traffic was also very limited during the past years, and today around 15 locomotives remain operational, of which the operational need is roughly half. The company Sokolovská uhelná, the legal successor, became the owner of the locomotives . Similar to Most, the locomotives here were also modernized using an electronic control system with joysticks and lever control. Unlike the Mostec locomotives, modern semi-pantographs and IGBT converters were installed on the local machines. A total of 11 locomotives were modified in this way, which should last in operation until the end of coal mining and overburden storage.

Marking

Originally, locomotives were only marked with so-called race numbers, which were assigned by individual owners. At HDB, the locomotives were numbered 235–259, following the older 26Em type machines. SHD marked their machines with numbers in the interval 659–723, also in connection with the previously delivered 26Em machines (number 575–656, the two machines handed over from HDB later received numbers 657 and 658). In the 1990s, there was a transition to the standard designation according to the UIC system , and locomotives of both types thus received the same designation as series 127, with inventory numbers identical to the original race ones (e.g. locomotive number 659 was newly designated 127.659-1, etc.). Both designations are displayed on Mostec locomotives today. Administratively, 26Em locomotives (numbers 127.575–656) were also marked in this way, but only at MUS (since, unlike the Sokolov network, the operation here is supervised by the Railway Authority ) and only some of them were physically marked with this number. The page therefore only describes machines of type 27E.

The last marking change was the modernization of part of the Sokol locomotives in 2009-2010 , when the reconstructed machines were assigned the new designation 127.501 and above, while retaining the original plant numbers.